StG: "He was jailed for contempt of court."

Yes, Toben was jailed for contempt of court, or in other words for ignoring the courts direct orders on numerous occasions. But to say it wasn't a free speech issue is just plain silly. The court ordered he shut up, and he didn't.

stevenlmeyer: "Like all freedoms, the proper limits of free speech are exceeded when it is about causing harm."

How can it be any other way? Even in that bastion of free speech, the US, bans some things. Anything that creates imminent danger is out: like yelling "fire" in a movie theatre. In Australia people are forbidden to talk about their deliberations while on a jury. That seems OK to me.

So there is nothing wrong with the standard. It is just where you draw the line. And for me, Houellebecq's thread "I feel, so you must change" http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2746 summed it up rather neatly. That is where Steven Lewis and Peter Wertheim demand we draw the line; that is their basis for saying Toben causes harm. They feel Toben's opinions abhorrent, they are worried others might take them up, and therefore Toben must be forced to change.

There is little evidence that many things we censor cause harm. Porn, Simpson's cartoons, playing violent video games - there is no strong evidence either way. (Which is to say there while some studies show high porn exposure correlates to increased bad outcomes like rape, others show the reverse effect. Ditto for kiddie porn.) So if you read Clive Hamilton's arguments for censorship, they boil down to the fact that he asked people if things like porn made them feel uncomfortable. And guess what - to many people (particularly women) it does. Thus he says we should censor it.

So again it seems "They feel, so you must change". Like you I find such arguments nauseating. They lead to things like mandatory internet filters, a scheme that necessarily requires things be censored by moral guardians operating in secret. You'd think it self evident that cure is worse than the disease, but apparently not.

Yes, freedom of speach is a real double edged sword.
Did you see Four Corners last night ?

Someone circulated a DVD which purported to show that MI5 or other UK
government arm conducted the London Underground bombings.

It was shown at a mosque in London and the congregation was asked,
who believed that MI5 did it.
There would have 100 to 200 present and I could not see one that did
not have a hand up.
The BBC found the author who was an Irishman who believed he was God
and had authored similar stories.
He is being extradited to the UK.
Another person also has been running a conspiracy site on the
bombings as well as a Auschwitz Holocaust denial site.

The DVD said that the bombs were planted under the trains.
It did not explain how come the four moslems who arrived in London
together all by co-incidence all sat next to the bombs on three trains
and a bus.
Also the BBC did not pick up on that.

Really it makes you wonder if some of these people should be locked up
in a psychiatric hospital.

The BBC showed conclusively that all the DVD "evidence" was a load
of nonsense.
Now many moslems believe the DVD and some are promising revenge for
the bombers.

This is a clear case of freedom of expression being quite dangerous.

rstuart "But to say it wasn't a free speech issue is just plain silly. The court ordered he shut up, and he didn't."

No they didn't.

"The sentence follows seven years of Toben repeatedly ignoring court orders requiring him to remove racist material from his Adelaide Institute website.

His journey to prison began in 2002 when the Federal Court found Toben's website breached the racial-hatred provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act.

[...]

Toben is going to jail for contempt of court. He was ordered to remove the offending material and he didn't. He promised to remove the material and then reneged. He apologised to the court but then recanted."

He didn't go to jail over freedom of speech.

Bazz: "an Irishman who believed he was God ... makes you wonder if some of these people should be locked up in a psychiatric hospital."

He is clearly mad. But we lock mad people up in psychiatric hospital for their benefit, not ours. Maybe he is a perfectly happy mad man.

Bazz: "This is a clear case of freedom of expression being quite dangerous."

Bazz, you really need to take a hard look at your definition of dangerous. Driving fast is dangerous. A cleric urging Jihad, asking people to go out and kill their neighbours is dangerous. George Bush was really, really dangerous. But a nut case publishing a DVD? Ye Gods!

Still, I guess I should look on the bright side. If we are going to make the ravings of nut cases illegal that will improve the posts here no end.

Bazz: "Now many moslems believe the DVD and some are promising revenge for the bombers."

These people take the rantings of an obvious lunatic to heart, and you blame the lunatic? It seems to me they want to believe, indeed are longing for an excuse to go on the rampage. The lunatic has an excuse. He is after all a lunatic. What excuse do these Muslims, have? How about their community leaders, their religious leaders, the politicians who apparently tolerate this sort of crap blossoming in their midst?

rstuart; It does not really matter if the originator of the nonsense
is a lunatic or is just a sane malicious person, they are equally
dangerous.
It certainly raised in my mind whether the moslems in that mosque were
really very stable intelligent people as they so readily accepted the
DVD on face value without discussion just because the imman believes it.

I think most on here would want to know more ins and outs of the matter
before we en mass accepted it.
It is the ready acceptance by some that makes it dangerous.

Bazz: "It is the ready acceptance by some that makes it dangerous."

The central concept here Bazz is it is not the words that are dangerous, it is the deeds. No matter how bad the words, they can't by themselves do harm.

The question you must ask yourself is: if a reasonable person heard those words, are they likely to do something dangerous. In the case of someone yelling fire in a theatre, the answer is clearly yes. In the case of George Bush saying he had proof that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction, the answer is again clearly yes. So if you were calling for the banning of those particular words Bazz, I would understand and perhaps support you.

I expect we agree on this point. The disagreement is over where to draw the line. An example might make it obvious why I think you are putting it in the wrong place.

Let say we have a nut case going around saying the British Royal family killed Lady Diana and her boyfriend. Let us say he is famous, he owns Harrods, is very persuasive and worst of all is a member of that homicidal race prone to murderous rage - the Arabs. Clearly such a well educated, successful and polished man is very convincing. Surely therefore it is reasonable to expect his well published beliefs will send some fringe Arab group into a revenge fueled frenzy. So he must be silenced, locked up if necessary.

Well perhaps not. At least they hadn't lock up Mohamed al-Fayed last I checked. Perhaps this is because no reasonable person, Arab or not, would going around harming people on the basis of those words. But apparently, you are saying it is perfectly reasonable to expect practising Muslims to be thrown into a terrorist rampage by words from a Irish nut case who proclaims himself to be a god.

If so Bazz, at this point we must agree to disagree. I don't see anything reasonable about that whatsoever. It would make more sense to lock up Mohamed al-Fayed.